Download The Reification of Mindfulness: Ontological Drift in Buddhist Thought

The Reification of Mindfulness: Ontological Drift in Buddhist Thought
In its formulation, the First Noble Truth of Buddhism—the truth that there is
suffering—represents a commandment as much as a postulate. Through it, Buddhism
urges its followers to look at the change and loss that characterize experience and
acknowledge the suffering in their lives. The need for such a teaching as one of the
foundations of the Buddha’s thought indicates the ease with which individuals turn away
from suffering and change in their experience. The eye of the individual constantly drifts
away from the realities of impermanence and stress towards that which she perceives as
solid and enduring.
In religion and philosophy, this tendency manifests as a constant gravity asserted
by ontological thought. Ontology—or a philosophy of being—posits a reified, enduring
nature to something behind all changing phenomena. It can be contrasted against
phenomenology, a philosophy that considers the world and individuals as processes
always in flux. The belief in an unchanging soul, an eternal God or a transcendent,
perfect state of consciousness all represent attractive ontological understandings of the
world.
While the Buddha’s thought was founded on its rejection of Hindu ontology for a
radical phenomenology, it has suffered a constant pull throughout its history towards
ontological thought. Mahayana, the Buddhist lineage encompassing both Zen and
Tibetan schools, exemplifies this in its description of a pure, unchanging “Buddha
Nature” inherent to all beings. While Theravada, the Sri Lankan school of Buddhism
based on the earliest known transcriptions of the Buddha’s words, has remained more
true to the Buddha’s phenomenology than its Mahayana counterpart, it has in
contemporary Western teaching succumbed to ontological drift in its reification of
mindfulness.
When the Buddha began teaching in India during the 5th century BCE, he stepped
into a spiritual landscape saturated with the religious worldview of the Upanishads—
Vedic texts embodying the teachings of early Hinduism. The Vedic texts espoused a
worldview similar to the Christian one familiar to Westerners in its ontological nature.
The Upanishads teach that human beings have an atman that transmigrates from life to
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life, carrying the individual through different rebirths. While the atman corresponds to
the Christian soul in its unchanging, eternal nature, it differs in that it actually represents
a fragment of Brahman rather than a self-contained entity.
The Upanishads describe Brahman as “existence, consciousness, bliss” and as
“truth” (Gombrich 64)1. It represents, not just existence itself, but a consciousness
permeating all existence. Furthermore, since truth (satya) is Brahman, and Vedic truth is
profound and eternal, Brahman necessarily has an eternal quality as well. Having already
solidified consciousness in the concept of the atman, the Upanishads manage, through the
concept of Brahman, to fit the constantly shifting material world into an ontological
framework by reifying a central element of reality—consciousness—as constant and
enduring in Brahman. However, it is impossible for one to directly understand the truth in
their normal state of being. Rather, the realization of the underlying nature of reality only
happens after prolonged meditation brings one to the understanding that the individual
soul, atman, is ultimately the same thing as Brahman (Gombrich 120). Consciousness in
Vedanta is an eternal, pure element of reality constituting profound, objective Truth.
The Buddha disagreed with the Upanishad’s ontological worldview. Instead of
espousing a philosophy presenting consciousness as an eternal, reified entity, he
described all of experience, including consciousness itself, as nonrandom processes. In
place of Vedic ontology, the Buddha presented his followers with a radical
phenomenology.
Five khandhas (Skt: skandhas) constitute the individual in Buddhist philosophy.
These five are physical processes—including the five senses and their objects—feelings
of pain or pleasure, apperceptions, volitions, and consciousness. While Buddhist thought
has always acknowledged the shifting nature of these, their translation as ‘aggregates’ has
nonetheless given them some quality of solidity. In his recent revelation that khandha is
short for aggi-khandha, Richard Gombrich provides a new translation of the term as
‘mass of flame’, thereby fracturing the standard translation that connotes solidity
(Gombrich 124). Composed of these five processes, the individual cannot be said to be
1
For a more detailed discussion of neuter Brahman and its relation to the Hindu
creator God, Brahma, I refer the reader to pages 41-42 of Richard Gombrich’s book,
What the Buddha Thought.
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anything but a process himself.
How can one claim to extrapolate the Buddha’s view on all reality just from his
view on the constituents of an individual? The Buddha only cared about what could be
experienced and did not consider there to be an objective world separate from our
perceptions of that world2. To understand this proposition, it is necessary to investigate
the khandha of consciousness in more detail.
The Buddha describes six classes of consciousness: eye-consciousness, earconsciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, and
mind-consciousness (SN 22:56-57 and 22:95). Consciousness has to be consciousness of
something—it cannot exist independently. Put another way, consciousness is appetitive
or parasitic: just as a ‘mass of flame’ is dynamic process dependent on fuel, so
consciousness is a dynamic process dependent on mental forms and sensory stimulus.
This description of consciousness has two significant implications. Because fire
in the Buddha’s time was considered inseparable from its fuel, consciousness’s
association with flame implies that consciousness isn’t simply dependent on its object,
but is, for all practical purposes inseparable from its object. As Gombrich so eloquently
articulates in What the Buddha Thought, “The subjective and objective presuppose each
other and all experience requires both” (Gombrich125). Therefore, the Buddha’s
phenomenological view of the five khandha making up an individual’s experience
effectively constitutes a phenomenological view of reality itself. This proposition is not
as strange as it might first sound; a person’s reality is composed of that which she
experiences. Even if that experience is mediated through scientific methods, it is to some
degree subjective. The Buddha articulates this idea concisely in his observation “the
world lies within this fathom-long body” (SN I, 62).
The second significant implication of a view of consciousness as parasitic or
appetitive is that consciousness is dependently arisen. This term simply means that
consciousness arises—comes into being—dependent on and influenced by other elements
of experience. Just as the quality of a fire depends on its fuel, so the quality of
2
Sue Hamilton’s Identity and Experience: The Constitution of the Human Being
According to Early Buddhism solidifies the interpretation as the aggregates, not just
constituents of an individual’s consciousness, but of reality itself.
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consciousness depends, in part, on the nature of its object. Furthermore, other mental
factors (cetasikas)—such as perception, feeling, volition, emotions, etc.—that arise in the
mind concurrently with each moment of consciousness also influence it (Noble 88). Each
such “mind moment” is not completely isolated from or independent of previous ones as
past moments influence current moments through the principle of kamma (Skt: karma).
Because they occur so quickly, we mistakenly believe that such moments of experience
constitute a continuous experience and that such moments of consciousness constitute an
enduring, unchanging self. However, if one looks closely at their experience, even within
the course of a day, they will see that the way they perceive the world around them
changes on an hourly, if not minute-by-minute basis.
This radical phenomenology represents a problematic philosophy in that it seems
to demand a corresponding ontology. Put simply, the idea of change—becoming—only
makes sense when contrasted against the idea of solidity—being. Why point out the
shifting, suffering nature of samsaric existence if there exists no enduring state of bliss to
work towards? Not only did the Buddha recognize the logical necessity of such a
concept; he believed that one could experience it in nibbana (Skt: nirvana). However, in
his formulation of nibbana, the Buddha exercised his characteristic subtlety and managed
to avoid falling into the Vedic ontological mode. On an abstract philosophical level, he
avoided reifying nibbana through any description of a single essence or ‘being’ inherent
in the world or individuals (Gombrich 69). Instead, the Buddha defined salvation in
negative terms: nibbana literally means “the going out of a flame” (Gombrich 12). The
flames extinguished include, not simply those of passion, hatred, and delusion, but also
those of the five khandhas mentioned above. While one can point to equanimity,
goodwill, and clarity as the qualities that manifest in the absence of the first three flames,
it is far more difficult to articulate what replaces the constituents of existence once they
have been extinguished. When asked what happens to an enlightened person upon death,
the Buddha refused to answer (Bodhi 232).
Let’s pause here to appreciate the Buddha’s genius in his formulation of the salvic
gnosis. Having at the beginning of his teaching posited humanity’s desire to find security
in enduring concepts, the Buddha found himself forced to articulate just such a concept.
Inherent in the Buddha’s vision of a humanity caught in a shifting, suffering existence
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was an understanding that individuals tend to reify and become attached to such visions
of salvation. Yet the Buddha felt that an accurate conception of nibbana was, not only
inaccessible to the unenlightened, but a distraction from understanding one’s
phenomenological existence. In order to maintain his followers’ focus on their shifting,
unsatisfactory experience, the Buddha described nibbana chiefly in negative language: it
is “the undisintegrating, the deathless, the nonattachment, the unmanifest, the dispassion”
(SN 43:1-44, combined; IV 359-73). It is “the extinguishing of a flame”. Through such
articulation, he preserved his phenomenological view of reality and the integrity of his
followers’ practice.
In place of Hinduism’s ontological conception of self-contained, eternal
consciousness, Buddhism presents a radical phenomenology describing the world,
including consciousness, as a collection of processes in a constant state of flux. Far from
being irrelevant, these distinctions shape the goal, methodology, and lens of each
tradition. Where Hinduism aims to understand the stable, all-encompassing unity that
underlies reality, Buddhism aims to see conditioned and transitory nature of all
experience. The methodological differences arising from these differing worldviews
manifest most clearly in the two traditions’ differing approaches to meditation.
Because in Hinduism consciousness, or atman, is considered a stable entity, it can
serve as a destination or goal in meditation. Furthermore, it is the most desirable
destination as one’s experience of pure consciousness is paramount to the liberating
knowledge of one’s own equivalence to Brahman. Such experience is described as nondual; because it is consciousness of consciousness itself, there can exist no division
between the experience and he who experiences. In order to achieve such states of
mystical realization, Vedanta’s brahminical tradition prescribed tranquility (samatha)
meditation, which stabilizes the mind through focus on a single object such as the breath.
Such practice culminates in what Buddhists termed sanna-vedavita-nirodha or ‘cessation
of apperception and feeling’—a trance-like state of non-dualism (Gombrich 126).
According to Vedic tradition, the understandings gleaned from such states represent, not
just conventional truths, but profound, objective Truth.
While the Buddha accepted samatha meditation as a legitimate means to stabilize
the mind, his phenomenology naturally led him to teach a radically different form of
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meditation (Gombrich 126). As Buddhism considers all consciousness to be dependently
arisen and therefore subjective, it lacks a reified state of ‘being’ and knowledge to aim
towards in meditation. This is not to say that Buddhist psychology doesn’t acknowledge
certain states to be more wholesome than others and aim towards their cultivation.
However, ultimately all states of consciousness must be acknowledged as conditioned
and limited. The Buddha urges his followers to relinquish even the most refined mystical
states in order that they might turn their attention back towards understanding how all
experience arises and dissipates (Bodhi 410).
Buddhist philosophy is ultimately forced to search for an understanding of reality
within its phenomenological system. But what enduring truths can be gleaned from a
system in constant flux? The Buddha taught that the laws governing individuals’
experience, as embodied in the chain of dependent origination, were constant. Just as the
Buddha’s teachings turn back from a reifying concept of nibbana, describing instead
humanity’s current state and how to deepen one’s understanding of this difficult
condition, so meditations prescribed by the Buddha ask the practitioner to ultimately
forego meditations that pursue mystical states for meditations that provide insight into
how one’s experience constructs itself. Such ‘insight’ (vipassana) meditation finds its
clearest articulation in the Satipatthana Sutta. The Sutta identifies four establishments of
mindfulness: “the contemplation of being within body (…), moods within feelings (…),
mind states within thoughts (…), and fundamental truths (dhammas) within mental
processes” (MN 10: Satipatthana sutta; I 55-56). Through the careful observation of
one’s inner conditions, one may slowly become aware of and liberated from them. Such
meditation, based in a phenomenological view of the world, culminates in the experience
of nibbana.
Far from being incidental, phenomenology and distaste for reification of
experience represent foundational aspects of the Buddha’s thought. They are even more
significant for being completely counter to the ontological worldview prevailing in 5th
century BCE India. While one could argue that Mahayana Buddhism has diverged from
the Buddha’s original philosophy in several major respects—for example in its
formulation of a “Buddha Nature” inherent to all individuals—such glaring instances of
divergence are less prominent in Western Theravada. Indeed, the tradition prides itself
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on its adherence to the Buddha’s original thought.
Vipassana meditation traditionally exhorts the individual to disentangle himself
from experience and observe his inner world with a degree of equanimity and
compassion. Practitioners of such meditation frequently become aware of a “witness”
perceiving, and many times evaluating, their experience within sittings. Moreover,
practitioners often identify this observer as ‘self’ and consider it to be objective and
unchanging. While the Buddha’s view of consciousness as dependently arisen dictates
that this witness, like the rest of experience, is impermanent and influenced by other
mental factors, many modern Theravadan teachers have succumbed to the temptation to
reify this witness as an objective, unchanging consciousness. In doing so, they ignore a
central tenant of the Buddhist phenomenology and fall into an ontology the Buddha so
frequently satirized.
Because Jack Kornfield’s The Wise Heart represents the most popular and
sophisticated example of a Theravadan work embodying this trend, it will serve as the
focus of this article’s critique. Kornfield’s role in popularizing Buddhism in the West has
been invaluable. Furthermore, The Wise Heart represents a lucid and potentially
transformative work, valuable, among other things, for its pop formulation of twenty-six
tenets of Buddhist psychology. However, in its reification of consciousness it has strayed
from the Buddha’s original teaching.
Initially, The Wise Heart appears to retain a phenomenological view of
consciousness. The book attributes a dual nature to consciousness: it is both eternal and
pure, and atomized and conditioned. The eternal and pure aspect of consciousness is like
the white light emitted by a movie projector while the conditioned aspect is like the
colored light after it passes through the individual frames of the film reel—the atomized
moments of consciousness. It is questionable whether or not the suttas leave room for
this dual interpretation—the audience of the movie theater can never see the pure light
unmediated by the film—but they surely refute Kornfield’s later description of
consciousness:
(Consciousness) is empty like space, but unlike space it is sentient; it knows
experience. In its true state, consciousness is simply this knowing—clear, open,
awake, without color or form, containing all things yet not limited by them. This
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open quality of consciousness is described as unconditioned. As with the sky, all
kinds of clouds and weather conditions can appear in it, but they have no effect on
the sky itself. Storms may appear or disappear, but the sky remains open,
limitless, unaffected by all that arises (Kornfield 39).
Through its description of the “true state” of consciousness, this passage reifies
consciousness into something nearly indistinguishable from the Vedic description of
atman. Later passages make this parallel explicit: “In Zen (pure consciousness) is called
the ‘mind ground’ (…). Hindu yogis speak of the ‘timeless witness’” (Kornfield 42).
Later passages in the book designate this pure consciousness as an entity
essentially identical to “the eternal consciousness” permeating the earth —a role identical
to that which the Upanishads accord the atman (43). In spite of the book’s concessions to
certain conditioned qualities of consciousness, the above descriptions effectively supplant
the Buddhist concept of dependently-arisen consciousness with an ontological atman.
Such descriptions are not only in direct opposition to Buddhist phenomenology, but
ignore the Buddha’s reluctance to describe metaphysical processes he deemed irrelevant
and distracting to practice.
Furthermore, The Wise Heart equates this pure consciousness with the ‘witness’
practitioners frequently experience in meditation, thereby reifying the state of
mindfulness itself (43). The Wise Heart does not espouse a non-dual state of mystical
absorption like the Upanishads. Rather, it reifies a fundamentally dual state.
Mindfulness meditation is characterized by attentiveness to one’s experience, an
orientation that requires a fundamental split in consciousness between witness and
experience. By reifying the witness as an objective embodiment of unconditioned
consciousness, The Wise Heart establishes mindfulness as a source of unconditioned
knowledge.
In his lucid book, The Noble Eightfold Path, Bikkhu Bodhi deconstructs exactly
this reified view of the meditative witness. He observes that, although there may initially
appear to be a solid and constant observer in meditation, a deepening of perception will
eventually lead to its dissolution into a stream of cittas—mind moments (88-9). Each
such moment contains within it numerous mental factors and dependently arisen
consciousness.
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Kornfield’s formulation serves a definite purpose and speaks to an experiential
truth. Practitioners may find it extremely helpful, when caught in difficult states of mind,
to retreat to a witness they believe to be objective and safe. Through such distancing, an
individual can gain knowledge about difficult states of mind and begin to understand
experience more profoundly. Additionally, the concept of unconditioned consciousness
speaks to an experiential truth. Many practitioners can attest to the fact that certain states
of consciousness seem less conditioned—more liberated and open—than others. If the
concept of an unconditioned consciousness helps one cultivate such states, shouldn’t it be
considered a good thing?
The reification of pure consciousness in vipassana practice negatively influences
meditative practice in two ways. First, it solidifies a practitioner’s sense of self by
identifying it with the concept of the pure witness. This goes directly against the
Buddhist aim of analyzing experience through a phenomenological lens and thereby
deconstructing the concept of a solid self. Such analysis reveals the witness as
impermanent, subject to conditions, and therefore not ‘self’. Inquiry revealing the
emotional tones of the witness’s perception and commentary can prove fruitful but is
effectively discouraged through the ontological view of the witness in The Wise Heart.
Second, idealizing and romanticizing the state of objective mindfulness plays
directly into the individual’s tendency to cling to things that are pleasurable and familiar.
Given a reified state of mindfulness to strive for in meditation, a practitioner may dismiss
wholesome qualities and insights inherent in other ways of being with experience as they
do not seem to involve “the true witness”. Sometimes going through experiences of pain
and anger without immediately retreating to a witness may prove fruitful and cathartic
experiences. Reifying mindfulness effectively creates an inflexible and oppressive
criteria determining “right” meditative experience involving a pure witness from “wrong”
meditative experience.
Jack Kornfield’s book taken as a whole represents a wonderful articulation of
Buddhist principles for a general Western audience. Furthermore, as one of the teachers
first popularizing Buddhism in the West, he has been tasked with presenting a unified
theory of Buddhist psychology. Indeed, the ontological view of pure consciousness
espoused in the book appears to come largely from attempts to reconcile Mahayana
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beliefs with Theravada. Nonetheless, Buddhism has gained a strong enough foothold in
West that it must now work to delineate and critique its various schools and philosophies.
The fact that an ontological conception of consciousness nearly identical to that
found in the Upanishads has made its way into the writings of one of the most respected
and sophisticated teachers in Western Theravada indicates the widespread nature of this
drift towards ontology. Indeed, as mindfulness practice based on vipassana meditation
becomes increasingly prominent in psychotherapy3 and popular culture, the reification of
mindfulness will most likely become common as it corresponds to our naturally
ontological view of reality and self. This trend is already visible in the urging of many
Buddhist writers to “stay in the present”—an abstract and limiting conception of
mindfulness that reifies the “present” as an ontological category of reality. Just like the
meditative witness, the “present” is constantly shifting and must be skillfully approached
in different ways.
At its heart, this debate bears testimony to a poignant truth articulated throughout
Buddhism: in the face of constant change and loss, we crave solidity and permanence.
Our need to reify elements of our experience into an ontological system is a constant
feature of our lives bespeaking our humanity.
Works Cited
3
A 2007 survey found that over 40% of therapists were practicing some kind of
“mindfulness therapy” (Siegel 3).
10
Bodhi, Bhikku. In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon.
Somerville: Wisdom, 2005. Print.
Bodhi, Bikkhu. The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering. Onalaska:
Pariyatti, 2000. Print.
Gombrich, Richard. What the Buddha Thought. London: Oxford, 2009. Print.
Kornfield, Jack. The Wise Heart. New York: Bantam, 2009. Print.
Siegel, Ronald. “How is the Popular Mix of Meditation and Psychotherapy Changing the
Way We See the World?”. Alternet. N.p. 4 Jan 2012. Web. 8 March 2012.
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